


Lost

by DragonThistle



Series: Days You Think You'll Forget (but I kept a scrapbook full of polaroids) [10]
Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Brain Damage, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Memory Alteration, Memory Erasing Gun, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28987566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonThistle/pseuds/DragonThistle
Summary: What is the proper emotional response when your friend has had his memory wiped so effectively, he’s become a different person to the one you knew?
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: Days You Think You'll Forget (but I kept a scrapbook full of polaroids) [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1959427
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	Lost

**Author's Note:**

> "The leaves of memory seem to make  
> A mournful rustling in the dark."  
> -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The person Matt used to be clings to the edges of their lives like sticky cling film, catching them off guard when they least expect it. Reminders of him are sour and sting with nostalgic bitterness, salt rubbed into fresh wounds. No one wants to talk about it. They’re not even certain they could talk about it, even if they wanted to.

What is the proper emotional response when your friend has had his memory wiped so effectively, he’s become a different person to the one you knew?

* * *

Matt’s so distressed by the things in his room that he can’t remember being his that they clean it out.

They pack it all in boxes and store it in the attic. 

Seeing the room stripped bare, hauling boxes of memories into storage, feels like a funeral march. It’s like someone’s died. The solemn air hangs rain cloud heavy over the house, sapping the life out of every room and turning the sunlight pale and cold. 

The house feels too big and too small and like everything has been hollowed out. It’s a shell of a home right now. No one knows what will be left to fill it.

* * *

It was an accident.

Nobody’s fault, not really. 

But Tord blames himself and he’s a wreck over it. 

That was _his_ invention, it was _his_ stupid gun, and he’d just left it sitting around when he _knew_ what kind of handsy idiots he lived with. He spends hours, days, weeks, trying to repair the gun. He’s all bones and exhaustion and frustrated tears when he finally throws his tools down and puts his face in his hands.

“I can’t figure it out!” His voice cracks, snagged on the thorns wedged in his throat, sharp with blame and self-loathing, “I can’t—why won’t it work!? I’ve done everything—I just can’t—god! Fuck!” 

An expected fit of desperate rage has him throwing tools to the floor, tearing diagrams off the walls, kicking over stools and tool chests. He splits his knuckles punching his workbench. Something half built shatters into parts and pieces as he dashes it against a wall, scattering splintered motherboards and twisted screws.

When he finally collapses to the floor, his face is wet with tears.

* * *

No one wants to admit it, but Matt is undeniably different.

Where once was indifferent silence, is now bubbly chatter. What had once been a bored frown, is now a friendly smile. A messy tangle of unattended ginger hair is now a carefully brushed and cleaned quiff. The hunched shoulders and desire to hide from attention have turned into a straight back, bright colors, and the need to be the center of everything.

It’s like someone’s flipped a switch and turned Matt into an opposite of himself. 

It almost hurts to look at.

* * *

A rubber band snaps against the side of Matt’s head and Edd laughs, kicking his feet on the sitting room carpet. 

“Ooow! That hurt! Why’d you do that?”

Edd chokes off his laughter at the pitiful whine. He stares at Matt, blinking at the unfamiliar pout on his friend’s face. He’d expected retaliation, promises of revenge, the usual hijinks that ensue from their prank wars. But Matt is only gingerly rubbing the red spot on his temple and pouting, lower lip jutting out and a frown on his face.

“Uh…” Edd feels far away from his body for some reason, like someone else is talking for him, “S-sorry…”

Apparently that’s a satisfactory response because Matt beams and goes back to watching the television. Edd stares at him. Stares at him and tries to figure out why it makes him want to wretch that the rubber ban hadn’t been immediately snapped back in his face. Tries to figure out why watching Matt smile at the television makes the world tilt under his feet. Tries unsuccessfully to fit a square peg into a round hole all while memories press against the force of his will, a threatening tidal wave crashing against the dam he refuses to let down.

Edd abruptly stands up and leaves the room. 

The bathroom door slams shut. It doesn’t open again for a while.

* * *

“Here.”

Tom slides a plate of freshly cooked food onto the table in front of Matt, his face carefully blank.

Matt stares at it curiously and then looks up, “What’s this?”

Tom stiffens, his jaw tightening ever so slightly, “Baked ziti. Extra spicy. It's your f......you'll like it.” He snaps his mouth shut around the rest of the words that want to come spilling out.

“Oooh~” Matt plunges his fork enthusiastically into the food. Tom pretends not to watch as he cleans up the kitchen. He sees Matt sniff the bite on his fork, put it in his mouth, chew, consider carefully. Tom’s heart thuds in his chest and he hates it, hates that he has hope at all, hates that he wants this to work, hates that he cares at all.

“This is _amazing_!” The shout is loud, excited, stars in Matt’s eyes as he looks up at Tom, beaming like a little ray of sunshine, “I think this might be my favorite food ever!”

Tom’s stomach flip flops and wrenches itself sideways. His throat closes. His ears are ringing. 

He leaves the kitchen with one hand over his mouth and the other shaking as it clutches a fresh bottle of vodka.

* * *

“He’s still in there.”

“No he’s not. It erased him. We’ve been over this.”

“He’s still _there_!”

“Tord—“

“He still likes the same food and he still walks the same and he—he can’t—you just can’t _erase_ somebody without doing damage to them! You can’t!”

“Well, you did. Congrats. Your gun worked.”

“Tom!”

“…I didn’t…it wasn’t done…this wasn’t supposed to happen…”

“It happened and we’ll just do what we always do when shit goes tits up.”

“And what’s that?”

“Fuck around until we figure it out.”

* * *

He forgets their names sometimes, mixes them up or says the wrong ones. Things easily slip his mind if they’re not right in front of him. Often times, he won’t remember what they did yesterday and will continue to ask when they’re going to do whatever it was that they had already done.

At first it hurts.

Then it’s funny.

And then it’s annoying.

It’s like an overused joke that’s gone on for far too long.

Despair turns to bitterness, turns to anger. If they lash out, it’s because they remember what is now long gone. If they are cruel, it’s because they miss him. 

At least that’s what they tell themselves at first.

And then a month rolls by.

And then six months.

And then a year.

And eighteen months after the initial incident, whoever Matt used to be is a faded smudge of memory, a smear of fingerprints on frosted glass misted from the rain. Flashes of him show through, every now and again, when Matt pouts or scowls, when he goes quiet out of fear or because something like melancholy is chewing on the heels of his mind. But what once was will likely never return.

The other three stop trying.

They adjust, they adapt, they endure. They accept this new person with a familiar face into their lives and stumble about trying to find how he clicks into their little group. Tord stores the memory gun deep in his lab and drives it from his mind, burying himself in other projects. Edd tells jokes and plays pranks so excessively that it borders on manic, drowning out the rain clouds in the house with cackles of frantic laughter. Tom drinks until he can’t think straight anymore, drinks until he’s throwing up and shivering on the bathroom floor because it feels like someone’s died and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

And they never tell Matt the truth.


End file.
